


Moonlight and Rose Petals

by IMAgentMI



Series: Mitch and Miss' non-PFL AUs [1]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, F/M, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:41:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26235064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IMAgentMI/pseuds/IMAgentMI
Summary: Kelly is content in her job, training as Elliot's Dedicated protector. She's willing to endure anything to stay close to him. So when he takes her hand and confesses, it has to be too good to be true.
Relationships: Agent Michigan/Agent Mississippi, Kelly MacKenzie/Elliot Davis
Series: Mitch and Miss' non-PFL AUs [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1905553
Comments: 1
Kudos: 2





	Moonlight and Rose Petals

**Author's Note:**

  * For [OverlyZealousEgg](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OverlyZealousEgg/gifts).



> What started as original characters for Red vs Blue roleplay has spiraled out of control. Agents Michigan and Mississippi have spawned more AUs than I can possibly count, some that remain in the recognizable RvB universe, and so many that are whatever nonsense popped into our heads at the time. This is just a single moment from one of those other rather extensive AUs. 
> 
> Love and thanks as always to Egg-- without her Miss, Mitch would be hardly a shadow of what she is.

"Kelly, can we talk for a moment?"

Awareness is slow to come - a series of steps, from nothingness, to darkness, then to the gentle insistence of the world reclaiming her senses. Kelly opens her eyes, lowers the bundled reeds that served as a replacement for her sword, scrubs a single escaped lock of hair away from her face with the back of her hand. She shifts her weight from foot to foot, rolling her shoulders to ease the stiffness from holding one position through her meditation. 

Restored somewhat, she finally turns to face Elliot. "Yes? What do you want to talk about?" 

But even as the words leave her lips, Kelly’s stomach drops. Maybe she should have heard it in his tone, should have expected something was wrong when he interrupted her forms. Elliot's too-serious eyes meet hers, and her mind flashes frantically over the last few days, trying to remember any failures, any mischief that would account for the way he is steeling himself now. She fights the impulse to kneel, already trying to find the right words to ask forgiveness for a failing she doesn't yet remember.

Elliot steps closer and to her shock, carefully pulls the reed-sword out of her hand, letting it fall with a clatter. His fingers curl around hers, and she looks down, as he pulls ever so slightly, guiding her closer. “I want to talk about you. About us. Kelly, I’ve wanted to tell you for so long, that you… that I...”

Her brown eyes meet his green, and she waits as his words falter. “Tell me what, Elliot?”

There’s another moment of silence, and his shoulders slump. “No, not like this. Let me start again--"

*********

Kelly opens her eyes, lowers the bundled reeds that served as a replacement for her sword, brushes her hair back over her shoulder and away from her face, then stops and frowns. Did she forget to pull her hair back before she started her forms? Odd, that isn’t something she forgets, not even rarely. She shifts her weight from foot to foot, rolling her shoulders to ease the stiffness from holding one position through her meditation. 

Restored somewhat, she finally turns to face Elliot. "Yes? What do you want to talk about?" 

Elliot steps closer and to her shock, carefully pulls the reed-sword out of her hand, letting it fall with a clatter. His fingers curl around hers, and she looks down, as he pulls ever so slightly, guiding her closer. 

“Kelly.” His voice is barely a whisper. “Ever since your Dedication, back when they first paired us together, I knew. You were the smartest, the bravest…” Elliot slows to a stop, then makes another attempt. “You’re the most… kind. And you’re strong, but always so gentle with me. I watch you train, I watch you fight, but still what I see is…” He scrubs his hand through his hair in frustration, then--

************

Kelly opens her eyes, lowers the bundled reeds that served as a replacement for her sword, and--

She stops, frowns down at her empty hand, and her hair falls down in a sheet over the side of her face. Wasn’t she just holding… there had been something in her hand. Hadn’t there?

There’s movement before her, and she looks up, eyes going wide as Elliot steps close, his hand taking hers. “It’s okay, Kel. Please, would you let me...?” 

Even though she’s not sure what he means, she nods her head. His free hand comes up to brush her loose hair back behind her ear, and to her own amazement, she turns her head to follow his touch. 

“There you go. Oh-” He hesitates as she moves, but doesn’t pull away. “You like that?” Elliot brushes his fingers against her hair again, then cups her cheek.

Kelly nods, her eyes closing. This isn't what shes used to. She's used to the sting of training swords, the ache of bruises. Shes used to black eyes and bloody noses and being as hard as the people against her, fighting as viciously as the other Dedicated. But being touched by Elliot feels...soft. Everything about this moment is soft. The barely-there whisper of Elliot’s voice, his thumb tracing over her cheekbone, the low sigh she can’t hold back. His lips…

Her eyes fly open, and Kelly turns back to see him holding her hand to his mouth, his lips brushing her knuckles. Elliot’s green eyes rise to meet her own, and as she holds his gaze, she watches a conflict in him come to an end. Tension leaves his shoulders, and he smiles as he presses his lips to her hand again. All Kelly can do is stand frozen, mouth hanging open as her brain tries and fails to bring forth words, any words at all. Elliot's free hand drops to find her own and he weaves their fingers together before leaning forward, his forehead touching hers. "Kelly, I love you."

She is supposed to be a warrior, his protector. She is supposed to stand strong and fearless against anything that would attempt to harm him, lay down her life to save his, if ever such a moment should come. Daily she is bruised and bloodied as she trains for her life in his service. She has never flinched away from danger or pain, keeps her feet even when she can barely lift her head, but Elliot’s words, laid out so simply, threaten to buckle Kelly’s knees under her. "You… you love me?" 

“You know I do.”

And she does. She can feel the weight of it like a blanket around her shoulders, like molten gold poured straight into her heart. Her fingers tighten around his, brushing her thumb along his own. Kelly closes her eyes, nuzzling in return, then tucks her head against his, cheek to cheek. 

“I love you, too.”

If the sound Elliot makes isn’t enough for her to read his response, the way he drops her hands to embrace her says the rest. A voice in back of her head babbles about distractions, the dangers of being caught by surprise, the danger of being caught at all and how they would surely be separated. Another would take her place guarding him, and she would be re-Dedicated to another, and that shame and loss would follow for her entire life. Her duty is to protect him and she’s risking it all, she’s failing, failing, failing…

Elliot pulls back abruptly and for a moment that voice stumbles over itself, goes silent as his hand cups under her chin, tilting her face up to his. His eyes are so close. His eyes, like emeralds, if emeralds could be soft, if emeralds could be liquid and so close, if she could drown in emeralds, if she --

Elliot’s eyes close the second before his lips touch hers, and Kelly feels the entire world shift, the ground tilting her forward to him. Surely that can be the only explanation, the way her body nearly falls against his, her hands clutching his arms as though he is the only thing anchoring her to sanity. But could it explain the way her lips press more firmly to his? The way her lips part to deepen the kiss? The way one hand releases her grip to cup the back of his head, the softness of his hair between her fingers distracting her a moment before his arms encircle her, half pinning, half cradling her to his chest?

This time when they part, Kelly swears the room around them dims, that Elliot actually glows with the strength of his smile. Awareness of anything but him narrows, nearly hiccups out of existence, in danger of taking her with it. Muzzily, she wonders what he would think if his protector, his own Dedicated swooned right there at his feet, and any shred of shame that rises at the thought is overwhelmed by a giddy fantasy of him kissing her back awake.

Awake…

A shiver courses through her, and Kelly pulls back slightly, looking around with a sinking heart. She knows this feeling, this awareness bleeding into the world around her. And try as she might, there is no going back now, now that she has noticed. 

The dream is concentrated around them, and in her half-alert state, Kelly marvels that she hadn’t seen it sooner. What had started as the entirety of Elliot’s room has shrunk away from the walls leaving void beyond anything that isn't illuminated. She can actually see the circle around them shrinking, and heat rises in her cheeks when she realizes that its center, its focus, is Elliot's bed. 

"Oh."

Magic wielders are susceptible to unusually lifelike dreams. It’s a well known and well-documented phenomenon although no one seems to know why it happens, unless you’re willing to simply say “it’s magic.” There is a wide spectrum of effects, vivid mundane dreams being the most common. But some sorcerers -- well, Kelly didn’t know how to describe it, but she always worded it to herself that they “leak” magic. Elliot wouldn’t cast spells in his sleep, but magic things would just happen seemingly on their own, especially when he had nightmares. Gusts of wind, or flickers of light, once a sound that reminded of Kelly of church bells. His worst dreams had caused papers to fly up in a gust, swirling around the room as though caught in a whirlwind. Another time every book in his room exploded open to the same page. 

But what was truly odd was the way that nearby sleepers would also find themselves likewise affected. Kelly had no real magic of her own, but was plagued by similarly vivid dreams. They felt so real that waking in the mornings could result in minutes, even a full hour of confusion as she attempted to pick apart what had been dream, and what had been reality, to even convince herself that she was not, in fact, still dreaming. It had taken a lot of effort, but she had learned by now to recognize the small signs that could identify a dream from real life, and ...this was not real. This was simply her own desires and wishes played out in the safe secrecy of her own mind. Elliot has a golden sigil that glows on his wall every night, his attempt to keep certain dreams at bay, he tells her. Keep them from spilling into the real world, even into her own mind. But she has no similar action she can take, no protection against her own unwanted visions, no matter how sweet.

Kelly closes her eyes, a wave of disappointment chilling her before she can push it away, trying to fill the sudden emptiness inside of her with duty. There is more than one way to care for Elliot. Protecting him has always been enough. As long as she can stay near him, it always will be.

Something touches her face, and she gives a start as Elliot draws her attention back to himself. His expression hasn’t changed, and he doesn’t appear to even notice her distraction. Kelly wants to close her eyes, to shut out everything but the feeling of his hand cupping her face, thumb tracing over her cheekbone. She wants to relax into his kisses and follow this dream where she clearly desires, but it’s too late. Still, she doesn’t resist when he leans forward and kisses her again, and she wraps her arms around him even as her mind kicks away to resurface from sleep, enjoying one last moment with him even as its sweetness dissolves around her.

Kelly doesn’t open her eyes again right away. She can feel she is lying on her left side now - she must have turned in her sleep. As pleasant as it is to see Elliot’s face when she awakens, their bedsharing is a way for her to protect him. She stays close to ease his nightmares and wake him if necessary, and always sleeps facing the door, his first defense in the slim chance of another Community attacking. But that has never happened, at least not in the years that she has lived and served in the Academy. 

The double shame of her own uncontrolled dreams and her failure to maintain even a facade of professionalism, even here in the privacy of Elliot’s own room, keeps her eyes closed. Kelly remains lying on her side, afraid that movement might wake Elliot. He works too hard, sleeps so poorly, and needs every second of rest he can manage.

Something touches her nose and Kelly brushes it away. Unseen, something else drops onto her cheek, and another, soft on her temple. She sighs, then stiffens. There is a sweetness to the air -- had she left a door or a window unsecured before turning in for bed? Her cheeks burn at the thought of yet another failure laid on her shoulders and she sits up, jostling the bed as little as possible. 

The moon is setting, and its light illuminates the entire room through Elliot’s single large window, gilding all it touches in silver.. Something falls out of the air over Kelly’s head, and lands softly in her lap. She picks it up between two fingers - thin but concave, velvety and cool. Another falls next to her, slow as snow, and across the bed, another. The sweetness in the air grows stronger, and Kelly gives the object in her hand a tentative sniff, her eyes going wide. A rose petal.

She looks up, and her mouth drops open.

Petals are appearing over the bed, floating lightly in a circuit once or twice before drifting down. Kelly’s head whips both ways, looking for anything else out of place in the room. When Elliot’s dreams touch the waking world, they are usually chaotic, their effects unpredictable, sometimes violent. But this manifestation is so gentle, she doesn’t trust it. There is a faint scratching sound in the silence, and it draws her attention to the bedside table, to a notebook that Elliot must have left there before they turned in. A pen stands upright, it’s nib touching the page as it moves, and she strains her neck to try and see what it is writing. Even in the dim light she can still recognize Elliot’s elegant script, but the words either seem random, or nonsense, or maybe even a different language. It’s written in a staggered, structured sort of way, which makes Kelly think of the poems Elliot sometimes writes, the ones he bashfully reads to her when she asks him to.

Kelly looks closer. Not all of it is nonsense. In the uneven lines there is a word repeated again and again. 

Her name.

“Kelly…”

Her head jerks back around in surprise. Elliot is still lying there, but as she watches he shifts, rolling from his side to his back and she sees his smile in the moonlight, beautific and delighted, even while still fast asleep. One hand rises from the bed, and Kelly stiffens, eyeing the room to see what may change, but just as slowly, he lowers it again, his smile even wider.

“Kelly… my sweet Kelly…”

For a moment, her world seems to tilt, much as it had in her dream. Kelly lowers a hand to the mattress to steady herself, trying to counter the way her whole body wants to lean in closer to Elliot. “Your…?”

The gentle sounds of Elliot’s room go silent to Kelly’s ears, as in her head thoughts move with tectonic slowness, as her world shifts, ripping apart everything she thought she knew - about Elliot, about herself - and forming into an entirely new world. She blinks, and sees the room with fresh eyes. And for the second time, she notices the room is silver. 

Completely silver. 

Her eyes rise to the wall beside Elliot’s bed. The golden sigil doesn’t glow there like it does every other night. The sigil that Elliot said keeps away a certain kind of dream. Not for the first time, she wonders what kinds of dreams those are.

Almost in answer, Elliot makes a new sound next to her. A hum, a moan, quiet as a whisper, repeated more loudly when she looks back down. His smile doesn’t lessen, even as his lips part, as his head presses deeper into his pillow. The silvery light in the room dims, but Kelly is too focused on Elliot to notice how it shifts slowly to red, the same as the petal she holds in her hand, too focused on Elliot’s happy sounds, and the way his hips move under the blankets, too caught up on the memory of the dream, and how the room around them had faded toward Elliot’s bed.

“It was you. It was yours!” Kelly’s head spins like the petals above the bed. It wasn’t her longing for Elliot in the safety of her own head -- it was his own dream, and she’d been pulled into it, into whatever the golden sigil was supposed to keep away. And as Elliot moans again, deeper this time, his mouth hungry around her name, Kelly thinks she finally has a good guess as to what those dreams are. 

Kelly hurriedly lays down again, careful not to jostle Elliot, desperate not to wake him. “Not yet, not without me!” she whispers. She snuggles as close as she dares, one hand covering his own. Kelly closes her eyes, trying not to shake the bed with her silent, delighted laughter. “Wait for me, Elliot. I’m coming.” 

As she goes still and her breathing slows, the moon outside their window passes the curve of the earth and the rose petals are left to fall in darkness.

And in the darkness, Kelly begins to moan.


End file.
